Dat-Day 80
It was
HELLEARTH on
‘You’d be talking to a chap… the next minute he’d be dead’
To mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, RT talks to four of the last survivors whose courage made D-Day a success – and secured our freedom I N T E RV I E WS BY K AT E
E COURTESY OF RICHARD BROCK
ighty years after D-Day, it’s the colossal barrage of ammunition fire that Richard Brock remembers. Just a week out of his teens, his very first experience of action was scrambling ashore at Normandy’s Gold Beach as part of the largest seaborne invasion in history. “The massive noise of battleship gunfire right over our heads targeting the coastal defences was horrendous – like hell on earth,” remembers Brock, of the East Lancashire Regiment’s 1st Battalion. “We were the support troops, so by then the Germans had got organised and we were getting all the heavy stuff from them, too.” For Brock, it was just the start of a 12-month odyssey as he helped liberate parts of France and the Netherlands, as well as Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. Covering hundreds of miles, he slept under trees, in hedges and in foxholes, constantly in danger before the Allies were victorious. Born on the Wirral before moving to Lancaster as an infant, Brock – now on the brink of his 100th birthday – had never been outside northern England when he was called up at 18. He spent almost two years training on Salisbury Plain, the South Downs and Brecon Beacons before going to Kent, where his regiment prepared for D-Day. With the rank of Driver IC (In Charge), he learnt how to waterproof his vehicle and drive in waist-deep water. “One day in the spring, Monty [General
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RICHARD BROCK
B AT T E R S B Y Bernard Montgomery] came to visit us,” says Brock, of the officer in command of all Allied ground forces during the Normandy invasion. “He wasn’t aloof, like some. He said, ‘Gather round, lads. There’s a big do coming off. I can’t tell you where, although you’ll find out. But I want you to be prepared.’”
DRIVER IC, 1ST BATTALION, EAST LANCASHIRE REGIMENT
B
rock hadn’t any idea of his destination when his ship, the Ocean Vigil, set off down the Thames Estuary with 2,000 men on board. His regiment made landfall in Normandy on D-Day plus two, Thursday 8 June, under heavy fire. “The advance troops had gone ahead, but Monty held us back in case there was a weakness in the line,” he explains. “We were divebombed, lying on the ground with the earth shaking. You wondered what the hell you were going into. We dug in, taking shelter from air bursts, and gradually advanced. “I was carrying supplies for others on the front line – rations, ammunition, hand grenades. I drove a Bren Gun Carrier and was always frightened of bazookas. I’d seen what they could do.” Brock was in HQ Company, which landed on Gold Beach with 130 men. “By the time the hostilities finished a year later, there were 19 of us left. You’d be talking to a chap, and the next minute he’d be dead. Patrols would go out ahead of us, not come back, and then we’d find all of them shot dead. These were men ▷
MAN O’WAR
PHOTOGRAPHED E X C L U S I V E LY FOR RADIO TIMES BY
M AT T S Q U I R E
By the end of the war, Richard Brock had been promoted to sergeant. Far right: his regimental standing orders for postwar Germany
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